


A Mighty Famine

by SapphyWatchesYouSleep (Sapphy)



Series: The Prodigal Sons Verse [5]
Category: Batman (Comics), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms, Injustice: Gods Among Us
Genre: Control Issues, F/M, Gen, Harley is actually good at her job, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Injury Recovery, Jealousy, M/M, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Therapy, and as professional as she can be in the circumstances
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 01:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5072368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/SapphyWatchesYouSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a therapist to people you're living with isn't exactly ideal, but Harley isn't going to leave all these broken people to fix themselves, not when she's right there. Plus it makes a nice change from fighting evil Superman.</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>(Previously called The Tower Sessions)</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mighty Famine

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure yet how many of these there's going to be. Theoretically one for every inhabitant of the tower except John.
> 
> Obviously Harley being therapist to people she lives and works with like this is problematic, but as she points out to Tim in chapter one, it's generally less problematic than leaving them to try and fix themselves.

Tim’s woken by the sound of the door opening. He’s getting better every day, but he still needs a ridiculous amount of sleep. The one comfort is that at least it is sleep now, not unconsciousness. It’s a small distinction, but it makes a big difference, gives him a feeling of having some control over his own body.

“You awake kid?” asks a soft voice that is unmistakably Harley’s. She has a distinctive accent, a definite New York Jewish twang combined with a Gotham drawl, and unpredictable cadences that are pure Joker. It makes her sound harmless, even comical, and Tim wonders, not for the first time, whether that’s deliberate.

“I’m ‘wake,” he mumbles, pulling himself up to lean against the headboard. “What’s up?”

Harley comes right into the room then, smiling brightly. “Time for your session with Dr Quinzel,” she tells him, taking the seat beside the bed. It’s a small armchair, brought in from one of the bigger bedrooms, and it’s mostly been used by Jason, though Bruce has spent a fair amount of time in here as well.

“I’ve got a doctor,” Tim says, being deliberately obtuse. He knows he’s probably in need of bucket loads of therapy, but he hates talking about his feelings, and he doesn’t trust Harley as far as he can throw her.

“You have. And she told me you need therapy,” Harley says firmly. “I know I wouldn’t be your first choice kid, and if there were any other options I swear I wouldn’t be doing this. I’m crazy not unprofessional. But we can’t bring anyone in from outside, and you can’t risk talking to anyone who isn’t in the Insurgency. It might not work, but at least give it a try, yeah?”

Her logic is flawless, and Tim has to concede defeat. He nods.

Harley grins. “I knew there was a reason you were my favourite Bat.”

“You picked a favourite vigilante?” Tim can’t resist asking.

“Well sure! Whadda you think us Arkhamites talk about in the cafeteria? Everyone’s got their favourite Bat.”

Tim smiles at the image, Batman’s rogues gallery sitting around a Formica table ranking his family in order of popularity. “Did anyone ever pick Bruce?”

“Mista J did of course,” Harley says, grinning at him. “Not that that’ll come as any kinda surprise. No one else though. He’s not good at making friends, our Batsy.”

“Do you miss him? Joker I mean?”

“This is sposed to be your therapy time kid, not mine. Yes I miss him, I miss him a lot, but I also know I’m better off without him. But we’re not here to talk about me.”

Tim sighs. “Okay. Prod away then, Doctor Harley. I can’t promise you’ll get anywhere, but I’ll at least make an effort to cooperate, since it’s Leslie’s idea.”

Harley beams at him, seemingly genuinely pleased that he’s acquiesced. Well apparently he’s her favourite Bat, so maybe she is.

“Let's start small. How’re ya feeling? In yourself.”

“Physically better. Mentally too. I’m getting stronger. I feel more in control.”

“I’m guessin’ you don’t like bein’ outta control of yourself?”

“Hate it. I’m a control freak, I know I am. Plus I’ve been dosed a few too many times by Ivy, and Scarecrow, and your Mista J to be comfortable with any kinds of drugs, even when I know they’re good for me.”

“Jason said it bothered you when you woke up and found he’d been treating you for a year?”

“Yeah. I mean, losing a year, that was pretty fucking awful. But knowing that during that year he’d been injecting me and giving me intravenous fluids, and…” Tim shudders. “He saved my life, and I really am grateful, but it still felt…”

“Like a violation?” Harley suggests, and Tim nods, feeling guilty.

“Hey, that’s okay kid. Anything you feel is okay. Just ‘cos he did it for good reasons doesn’t mean it wasn’t a violation. And it’s okay to be freaked out by that, and to want to regain control, yeah?”

“I just… I feel so ungrateful. He did so much for me. That year… he doesn’t talk about it much, but I know it was like a living nightmare to him, and he went through all that just for me. He could have run, got the hell out of the country, started fresh somewhere, but he stayed in America, for me. He put up with feeding me and washing me and changing my catheter, he lived alone with no one to talk to just so he wouldn’t endanger me, and here I am whining about the fact that he didn’t check with me first before saving my life, when I wasn’t even awake.”

“Are you angry with him?”

“No! God no. I just… I don’t know. I was so out of control for so long, it still freaks me out to think of it. And he had so much power over me. It’s not that I don’t trust him, I do, and he’s proved he’s worthy of that trust, but I don’t like being powerless, and I like someone else having power over me even less.”

Harley smiles this strange little secret smile, like she knows something he doesn’t. “So you need ways to reassert control?”

“Over Jason? I never had any control over him.” (Not outside those fantasies that he’s never discussing with anyone ever).

Harley’s smirk widens. “Over your own life, silly. You need to find things you can do in your current state that give you a feeling of control without endangering your recovery. You also need to accept that sometimes everyone is helpless, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But that’s something that will take time. The other thing is a quick fix. So what gives you a feeling of control?”

“At the moment, not sleeping so much. Being able to actually wake up. Getting to decide what I eat instead of it all being drips and meal-replacement shakes. Helping with the war.”

Harley smiles. “Well that’s good, that’s something to work with. You still need to get plenty of sleep, your body’s working overtime to try and fix all the damage, but you could try setting yourself set times for your naps. So long as you get enough sleep and don’t overtire yourself, there’s no reason why you can’t be setting an alarm, or assigning specific times for naps.”

Tim nods, surprised by the sensible suggestion. That does sound like something that might help sooth his inner control freak. He’s always like alarm clocks, stupid as that sounds, because they let him control something so completely out of his control as sleep. There’s no reason this should be different just because he’s sleeping more.

“Great, you can have my alarm clock, I never use it. Food wise, you’re still gonna need to have some of the shakes and stuff, but Leslie says you can start having small amounts of real food, and you know Alfie’ll cook you anything you ask. And helping with the war? Kid, you already did. We’ve actually got plans thanks to you. We’ve got things we can do instead of just waiting for Supes to make a move and then reacting. Trust me, you’ve already made a huge difference.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. I just lie here, day in day out, with nothing to do. I’m bored.”

“Laptop,” Harley says firmly. “I bet Oracle could use another pair of hands, and you’re kinda a computer genius, right?”

“Kinda,” Tim agrees.

“Great. So we’ll get you hooked up to Oracle, and you can help her. The wifi here’s actually pretty good, though god knows how. That way you can help out without needing to get out of bed, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Now tell me what’s really bothering you.”

“What?”

“That was all superficial stuff, and most of it you knew already. You were testing me. So now you know I still remember my training, and I’m not trying to hurt you, how about you tell me what’s really going on, yeah?”

“Nothing. It’s just… Jason.”

“Yeah? What about him?”

“I… he’s sleeping with someone in the tower.”

Harley gives in a slow hard to read look, and asks, “who?”

“I…” Tim could deny knowing, he could pretend he wasn’t certain, but… “Constantine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Bruce isn’t actually interested in sex, no matter how many times I’ve suspected otherwise, Selina is currently wholly invested in Bruce and not nearly as polyamorous as she would have have people believe, you are his therapist and not prone to that kind of abuse, Fate is Fate and Zatanna… Zatanna would be Jay’s type, if I didn’t know that she was mostly vanilla.” He tries not to sound too hopeful. It’s just… he doesn’t think he could compete with Zatanna, who is beautiful and insecure only in fairly normal ways. Constantine is easier to deal with, for all that he’s sexy as hell and gives the impression of being both fascinatingly kinky and amazing in bed seemingly without any effort.

“Good reasoning. And you’re right that they’re involved, but they’re not having sex.”

Tim raises his eyebrows in disbelief. The way Jason has act lately, the particular calmness, the slight smile he seems unaware of… “What are they doing?”

“I think that’s something Jason should tell you. I don’t want to break his confidence.”

“Haven’t you already, by telling me they’re not sleeping together?”

She smiles at him, and he has no idea what it means. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. He’s never been great at reading facial expression that _don’t_ have a dozen layers of hidden meanings. “I am absolutely certain that both of them would want you to know that, if only so you don’t attempt to murder John.”

“I _wouldn’t_ ,” he protests, but it’s at least partly disingenuous. He wouldn’t, but he’d think about it, because he’s not a good person, not deep down.

“Well now we never need ta find out, because they are not having sex, and frankly it seems vanishingly unlikely that they ever will. I’m not sure Jason even wants them to.”

“But Constantine does?”

“ _Constantine_ is fully aware of what a terrible idea it would be, and of how everyone else in the tower would react if he ever allowed it to happen. But you are fully aware of how attractive Jason is.”

“Beautiful,” Tim corrects absently, his mind working on the problem of just what involved but not sleeping together means. Harley is both too intelligent and too queer for her to fall into the trap of considering non-penetrative sex to be not really sex at all. What does that leave?

Harley laughs softly. “Nice ta see you thinking about something other than how much you hate being ill,” she says with a grin. She stands, tugging her black jeans back up over her hips where they’re ridden down. “I’ve given you some coping strategies, distracted you from your self-pity and given you a reason to have to talk to Jason about something real. Not bad for a first session. Same time next week?”

Tim surprises himself by not even having to think about it before he nods his agreement. Maybe having a former supervillain as his psychiatrist isn’t such a terrible idea as he’d feared.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are wonderful, and every one means the world
> 
> Why not come talk to me about Injustice? I'm sapphywatchesyousleep on tumblr.


End file.
